


Outcast of Auron

by Pat_Jacquerie (Pat_Nussman)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Episode: s03e07 Children of Auron, F/M, Unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-08 00:12:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pat_Nussman/pseuds/Pat_Jacquerie
Summary: Cally's evil twin kidnaps Avon and has her way with him.





	Outcast of Auron

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: This is another story-in-progress, but since there are two other people working on it with me, I feel there might actually be a chance that this will get done one of these days. I hope so, because I'd hate to lose the first scene (below), which I had an amazing amount of fun writing. The plot for this one is simple: Cally's evil sibling decides to make off with Avon and indulge in a little rape and torture to avenge herself against Cally's imagined abuses against her. Yes, this is an unabashed 'get Avon' story. The three scenes below are all from my sections of the story, the first one below being the prologue bit…

On the third day after everyone else had died, Sharat pried open the door of her prison.

It was tedious, painful work, but after nearly two decades of imprisonment, she was well used to tedium. And to relying upon herself, for herself was the only company she had, except for those two whining, intrusive voices in her mind, and one of those had gone blessedly silent four days since. 

Once, in despair, she'd tried to make friends with the rat who regularly visited her solitary cell, but found him--like her fellow Aurons--a fickle and untrustworthy companion. 

But now they were all dead. Except her. And perhaps the rat.

Sharat smiled, a feral and hungry grimacing of facial muscles, as she imagined the rat might smile, if rats could render their brown and unlovely faces so expressive.

She and the rat. She and the rat. Survivors together. Survivors when all of Auron had died. Deservedly died for their crimes against her and the rat. Her rusty laughter echoed off the walls of the tiny cell and she froze at the sound, looking around as if that harsh hysteria had issued from some other throat. 

No one here. Just her. She giggled again. Her and her rat, the invisible rat.

She applied a bent spoon once more to the lever holding closed the door. The Auron council's main defense against troublesome, flawed clones had been the force field just beyond the door and that had failed two days since. The guards had died the day before and she'd enjoyed that, enjoyed the shrieks and moans from their last extremities of pain and disease, those precious painful moments between life and death. Oh, yes, very nice. She couldn't wait to view the bodies.

With a dull thunk, the latch snapped back, the seldom-used door sliding reluctantly on its stiff tracks. She peered out into the narrow guard room beyond, almost hesitant now that freedom was in sight.

"Rat, where are you?" She stepped cautiously into the tiny room where the two guards lay motionless, one sagging over the straight back of his chair, the other slumped over a desk. The room stank of the sickly-sweet, nauseating odor of spoiled meat. Filling her lungs with the reeking air, she turned to see what her jailers had left her.

She went through their pockets methodically, discarding loose coins and family pictures carelessly onto the floor, but putting aside for herself a knife, a magnetic key and, of course, their guns. One gun she stuck into the waistband of her loose trousers, the other she kept in her hand, just in case, relishing the feel of the cold metal against the soft flesh of her palm.

Cautiously, she pushed the release beside the room's other door. It slid open easily, revealing a long hallway beyond, a hallway she'd seen but once as a child of ten, when she'd been brought here. And had never come out, until now.

"Rat?" she called softly. But no rats appeared among the motionless bodies scattered up and down the passage like crumpled, discarded toys. Though, for an instant, she thought she heard the scurry of small animal feet. Here, in a relatively open space, the smell of corruption had somewhat lessened in intensity, but still hung pervasive in the stuffy, uncirculated air. 

She searched a few of the bodies, choosing them at random, but soon gave up, finding nothing but coins and used handkerchiefs and now useless access cards. She pocketed a few of the latter, in case she found doors with the force field still intact.

"Rat, rat, rat?" The door to the world outside the geneticists' laboratory--and one-woman prison--still functioned, opening obediently at her approach, sending a rush of fresh air into the putrid building as she left it for the city beyond.

The street lay littered with stalled transports, stopped at odd angles on the pavement. A few had driven half onto the pedestrian walkway, their blunt metal bonnets bending the decorative rails separating the pedestrians from traffic. A few bodies lay just outside their vehicles, as if the drivers or passengers had tried to find some last refuge. But many more lay slumped against the clear windscreens, too weak to even open the door latch.

It was all quite satisfying.

Sharat pried open some of the transports to examine the lifeless occupants with interest, touch the dead, decomposing features, lift the cold, clammy hands and let them drop again. Dead, all beautifully, wonderfully, gloriously dead.

Except Cally.

The smile faded from Sharat's face and her lips took on a sullen curve. Cally, Cally, Cally...how she hated even the name. How nice, how delightful if her sister were as dead as this street full of corpses, as dead as that other, pitiful excuse for a sibling, Zelda. 

But she knew Cally lived, she could hear--like the constant murmuring of a distant sea--the ever-present clamor of her mind, chittering annoyingly just above the level of awareness. Cally could not hear _her,_ of course. Cally was inferior, like the deliciously dead Zelda...she, Sharat, counted as the only successful result of the experiment and for that crime her fellow Aurons had locked her away for the past twenty years.

Why? Because they were jealous--yes, jealous--of her talent, her telepathy that could reach into other minds and manipulate what she found there. She could produce pleasure at a touch or the most exquisite pain...and on one memorable occasion even the death of a bothersome lab technician who'd put her through one too many tests.

Franton had put her away for that harmless, childish act of rebellion. Oh, no, he hadn't killed her, not that good, idealistic scientist who'd bred her. He--he and the rest of them--had simply locked her away behind a shielded force field where she saw no one and could touch no one's mind. 

Then Franton and his cohorts turned to Cally. Cally the favored child, with all the aggression Franton desired and which puny Zelda had so sorely lacked, but tempered with the sickening idealism they'd tried to foist on Sharat without success. Cally, with her unpredictable telepathic talents, not a tenth as strong as her own, but safe and controlled for their safe and controlled little world.

Their safe, controlled and _dead_ little world.

Sharat slammed closed the transport door, shutting out the sweet fragrance of decay, and turned to walk swiftly up the street, ignoring the bodies now, heading towards the place where her hated sibling had last visited and had escaped her deserved fate.

Oh, yes, Cally had gotten it all, all the attention and praise that rightly belonged to her. Sharat had lived like a pale, echoing shadow of her sister, existing on the psychic tidbits of Cally's gluttonous feast through life. No amount of telepathic shielding could keep her sisters' minds from beating in her brain. Close enough to tantalize, but too distant to truly enjoy.

And Cally's thoughts were the strongest, the most ever-present.

She knew everything that happened to Cally, a distant viscast coming over a faulty connection. Cally's studies gave her secondhand knowledge, Cally's practice in martial arts gave her theory that her untrained muscles could neither practice nor execute. She knew the soft fabric of Cally's clothes and the over-firmness of her mattress on Liberator. And other, more frustrating, sensations.

The first time Cally made love, Sharat had twisted on her bunk in frustration, trying to reproduce the sensations she sensed with the touch of her own hands. But it was the pale, pale reflection of what Cally experienced. And when her sibling climaxed, Sharat had screamed loud enough to startle the guards, not in pleasure but in fury that she'd never feel the full strength of what her sister found so easily. 

Too much. The memories were too much. She halted in front of the control center, the gun trembling slightly in her hand, then forced herself through the doors. Inside she found more corridors empty of all but the rotting dead. "Rat, rat, rat?" she asked tentatively.

After only one or two false turns, she found nucleus of the control center. Cally knew the way and so, after a fashion, did she. Appropriating a comfortable chair from a dead technician, she pulled it in front of the main monitor, which displayed on a hum of multicolored static.

She put the gun down carefully, close to hand, and touched a switch to rewind the tape that monitored the control room. "Rat," she said softly. She was looking for a rat, she was looking for her dearest sister.

The tape ran backward on the screen through hours of static, then hours of motionless bodies, the mechanism humming like her not-quite-remembered mechanical womb. Then movement, then life. She ran the tape back a little further, restarting it in play mode.

Cally and her crewmates. Yes. She froze the tape to peer at her sister's adult face, then leaned sideways to examine her own in the reflective surface of a nearby computer. Yes, they were very like, though her own face was even thinner than the other woman's and showed traces of lines around the eyes that she could not find on the tape.

Restarting the tape, she examined Cally's two companions. The taller one she ignored after a single, searching glance. She'd detected feelings of warmth from Cally for this boy, this (Tarrant, her echoing memory supplied). Warmth, but no heat.

But the other one... Heat, indeed, although so far no flame. She leaned closer to the monitor, as if to leech the essence of the man from its flickering image. 

Pretty, Cally, very pretty.

Or perhaps not, although an impression of beauty was what first struck the eye. The features were more irregular than they initially appeared...a little rough, a little used, and not quite classic. But the chiseled lips and fine cheekbones and deep set, intense dark eyes were all a woman could wish. And the body, while not perfection, had a suggestion of power in the breadth of shoulders and deep chest. His very bearing, even prisoner as he was, spoke of a peculiarly male strength of will that simply begged to be conquered.

"Why haven't you had him yet, Cally?" she asked the unresponsive image. "Too much for you?"

The rest of the recording played out in silence as the prisoners escaped, leaving only the motionless dead behind and eventually a return to static.

A rustle and a squeak in the corner, behind a twisted, mottled body broke her reverie. "Rat?" She crossed the short space in two strides and caught the small, struggling creature in her hands, clamping two fingers around the tiny jaws to prevent a bite. 

The other one (this one?) had struggled, too. The wriggling, furry body touched a chord of memory, but a memory strangely vague and formless. It'd tried to escape, too, and she hadn't let it, but then it was gone and she couldn't quite remember what had happened.

No matter. She had her rat or at least a rat, and she had her dead Aurons, a whole feast of the mortality of her enemies.

Except Cally, who was very much alive.

But good. She didn't _want_ Cally dead, not quite yet. Not until she felt every pain that Sharat had experienced...all the pain, all the rage, all the helpless and aching unending frustration.

 _Then_ she would die.

She clutched the rat close to her thin chest, enjoying the living body near to hers after all the years of isolation. "What does she care for, my sweet sister?" she whispered to her companion. "My sister, who stole what I should've had, who stole my life." Her voice took on a singsong drone, as if crooning a lullaby for the animal between her hands. "Whatever it is, I will find it and I will use it and then I will kill it."

A picture formed in her mind. The dark, contained man whom she'd seen on the screen, imprisoned but unbowed. Defiant and proud, and oh, so imperfectly beautiful.

Oh, yes. She hugged the rat tighter. Oh, yes.

She wanted him, her sister did, but for some reason had never reached out to grasp what she desired. So she, Sharat, would do it for her, would tame that masculine prize and project every delicious moment of pain and ecstasy back to Cally's mind, gifting her with the same frustration that her outcast sibling had felt these years. 

Oh, it was too delicious.

Of course, Cally's precious Terran was safe on Liberator, far away from the dead planet of their birth. Not a problem. With the telepathic screening gone, distance was not a factor.

"What should I bait the trap with, little rat? What will bring this Avon running?"

She closed her eyes and cast her mind aloft to wander among the stars. Her sister's mind, as always, came into sharp focus with little effort. Sharat rummaged through her brain like a familiar but cluttered closet, picking up and discarding facts and emotions, until...

"Yes." Her hands clutched tight over the furry body she held, hardly noticing when the fragile spine snapped. "Yes."

Letting the dead rat fall to the floor, she kicked it carelessly aside with her boot before disposing herself more comfortably, preparing to fling her images forth. 

No matter that the creature was dead. After all, she could soon find another. She giggled softly.

The rats were everywhere.

*

This second scene is somewhat further on in the story, after Sharat has captured Avon…

 

Ohhh, this was fun. Sharat hadn't felt so much enjoyment since... well, she'd been ten when she'd killed that lab technician, hadn't she? That certainly counted as a fond memory. And poking amongst the decaying remains of her fellow Aurons had definitely qualified as enjoyment. But tormenting a person who could still react, still suffer...

Yes, this was something special. After all, the dead could not cry out, not sweat in such delicious fear, not show pure anguish in every curve and angle of a beautifully aristocratic visage.

Ummmmm.

Sharat hunkered down beside the recumbent Terran. Pity to find him semi-conscious, but he was so _pretty_ nonetheless. So pretty with the beads of moisture highlighting the cheekbones and forehead, his well-shaped mouth half-parted to allow the anguished, harsh breath to escape his lips, the long, long lashes shadowing clammy skin.

Sharat carefully sent a crystal-sharp image to her sister, enjoying the complementary pain that shot back to her instantly. Oh, so nice. Putting a hand between her legs, she stimulated herself thoughtfully, with careful, delicate exactitude gained in years of solitary pleasures, sending the tingling awareness to her twin mind. Knowing that the sensations coursing through her body were now teasing and arousing Cally, as well.

And there's more to come, my sweet sister.

She slapped Avon across the face briskly. His head lolled against the unpadded table, rolling to one side with the blow. Again. His head snapped back to its original position. She could wake him telepathically, of course, but this way was so much more fun.

The exquisite dark lashes fluttered open, revealing stark bewilderment in the dark eyes, as if he were a child waking from a nightmare.

But he's waking **to** a nightmare, sister dear. The worst nightmare of his life. And yours.

Recognition flashed across his face and a trepidation that he tried--and failed--to conceal behind a facade of impassivity.

You can't hide it from me, Avon. You can't hide any of the pain. Or fear. Oh, and you **are** frightened, aren't you? I must tell Cally. She'll be so...concerned.

His flesh seemed to actually shrink back from her caressing touch, which could be an unfortunate effect for one area of his body. But she had a cure for that. A lovely, terrible cure for that.

Slowly, with a horrid tenderness, her hand moved up his chest, learning the rise and dip of contours hid by a shield of black leather. Oh, no, mustn't let that marvelous chest be hidden. She wanted to feel the roughened silk of his skin under her fingers. Cally wanted to feel it, too. Sharat could tell.

And Sharat would do _anything_ for her sister.

Smiling at the protest--and the undercurrent that was far from a protest--that snaked into her mind, Sharat slid her hands up to the clasp at the neck of Avon's tunic. Slowly, ever so slowly, she drew the fastening down and down the chest until the tunic fell open to his hips. Anticipation... anticipation. It made the moment so much more delicious.

So many years she'd had to anticipate this. Almost, it was worth the wait.

She pushed the tunic back over his shoulders, but of course its descent halted at the elbow and wrist restraints. Pity to ruin the leather, but she didn't want to unloose him quite yet. She wanted to concentrate and not on just keeping her intractable captive immobile.

Finding the knife she'd liberated from her dead guard, she applied it to the shoulder and arm seams of the tunic. She proved messier at the task than she'd hoped, but it wasn't as if he'd ever wear the garment again, was it now?

Underneath the tunic lay a thin black jumper that pulled on over the head. Definitely no way to get that off intact. She sawed at it industriously with the knife, which was unfortunately a bit dulled by its work on the leather. But after a few minutes of earnest effort, threads began to part and she pulled the remains of the fabric apart to reveal a compact, finely-muscled chest.

 _Take a look, Cally. It's very nice._ She ran both hands up the flat belly to the pectorals--lightly dusted with dark hair--flicking at the flat nipples with her fingernails. _Cally, have you ever...oh, but of course not. Not my oh-so-moral sister. But you will now, won't you?_

She looked up to meet Avon's gaze and smiled at what she found there. Oh, no, he wouldn't be affected, wouldn't be aroused, would not cooperate even a little. _Make me die_. She quoted sarcastically, then laughed, a silvery tinkle of pure mirth. _Silly human, do you really think the only thing I can do is make you die? The enjoyment in that is so very brief._

With a final, lingering tug at a nipple, she moved her fingers down to the clasp of his trousers. A sharp intake of breath was Avon's only reaction as she lowered the fastening, but she smiled, nonetheless.

 _Anticipation. Sweet anticipation. Are you listening, Cally?_ Oh, yes, Cally most definitely was listening.

Sharat worked the trousers down over the narrow, neat hips, but could only progress so far without dislodging the fetters above the knees and at the ankles. The knife came into play once more.

Congratulating herself for possessing the foresight to remove his boots before binding him--that thick leather would've been too much for the guard's knife--she cut along the outside seams of the trousers, a little more messily than she had with the tunic. She was more impatient now and the knife increasingly dulled. After a short struggle, the pieces of the trousers fell away from Avon's legs, to be flung carelessly on the floor.

His legs were more lightly dusted with hair than his chest, nature's sparing distraction from the shapely muscles and fine-grained skin. Sharat explored elegant feet and smallish, curling toes, the muscles of each well-curved calf, then slid over the kneecap to the trim stretch of thigh, where the skin lay thinner and more delicate toward the apex of the slope. 

Cally had never seen this. And Sharat wanted her sister to experience every millimeter of raw silk skin. _Sister. He feels so..._ She let the thought trail off as she moved further up Avon's leg. 

Now to the main attraction.

Not surprisingly, considering the rest of his clothing, Avon's briefs were black, but made from a softly knitted silky material that clung to the curve of the hipbone and those sweet indentations that lead the eye inward. 

Very gently, Sharat inserted her knife through the opening of one leg, running the dulled edge along the smooth arc of bone. He stiffened, hardly breathing, unable to suppress an involuntary flinch. 

Oh, yes, Avon. You are in deadly danger.

She let the knife just barely crease the skin, then slid it inward from the hip, smiling as he pressed back against the unyielding metal table, his stab of unwilling visceral fear sending a seductive tingle through her mind.

Then, snapping the blade abruptly upward, she slicked jaggedly through the black fabric, so that it fell into two halves onto the table.

Avon's body jerked, then was as quickly disciplined into stillness, but she heard the rasp of his harsh, stressed breathing and smiled again.

Just the beginning of our fun, my sweet, sweet Avon.

With growing interest, she folded back the ragged black material and examined him. She'd seen men before, of course, through Cally's perceptions. But the physical reality of the male form drew her like a lodestone.

She slid her fingers inward from the ridge of hip, trailing them lightly over the smooth, sensitive skin of his belly, then lifting his penis between her thumb and forefinger. That he was limp came as no surprise...fear, pain, and anger, as well as fatigue, almost guaranteed a lack of physiological response.

In a few minutes, however, that would no longer be a problem.

Meanwhile, the exploration of new territory counted as a pleasure in itself.

She drew him between her fingers like a shopper testing the texture of a clothier's new bolt of silk, enjoying the only distantly-experienced feel of male genitals...very soft and, in this state, beautifully vulnerable. After a few moments, her hand wandered to his testicles, an even more foreign land, and so, so terribly fragile. She could hurt him so badly with a single hard squeeze, reinforced by a twist of thought.

But what did Terrans say about cutting off one's nose? No, she couldn't do that. Not just now, at any rate.

Her breath came quick and shallow now and the tingle between her legs had become a low but mounting burn. A doubled sensation, because another body, linked to her by twin minds, felt that same throbbing ache, rocked her hips in the same yearning rhythm. 

Because Cally felt Avon under her fingers, too. Almost. Not quite. Close but not quite close enough for satisfaction. Oh so happily, Sharat felt Cally's lips part, heard her harsh expelled breath, the small moan of almost physical pain that was deliciously not pain at all.

This, too, is just the beginning, sweet sister

Sharat came back to surroundings to find Avon's eyes fastened on her face, as if to read the thoughts there. _Oh, no, Avon. That's **my** game._ She smiled down at his flaccid penis and pursed her lips as if to kiss.

 With an effort she could feel, Avon kept his gaze steady. "As you see, I am likely to do you little good. For what you seem to have in mind."

Sharat stared at him for an instant's disbelief, then with difficulty stifled a giggle. _How little you know me, silly human. How little you know of my talents._ She caressed the limp flesh with an almost playful touch. _You won't rise for me, Avon? Very well. But I think you will..._

Closing her eyes, she formed a vision made of memories, memories she'd sipped like sweet, poisoned wine when she'd accompanied her sister to an old cellar, a dark cellar full of precious pain, a cellar on Earth.

...for Anna Grant.

*

__

And another scene just shortly later, throwing in a bit of Tarrant angst…

 

Tarrant stepped onto the flight deck a quarter hour before his official watch. With Avon off the ship, the smooth running of Liberator became his responsibility and he felt uneasy being away from his station for any protracted length of time.

Of course, Dayna might point out--with a heavy dose of sarcasm--that Cally by seniority alone (one could hardly consider Vila even for a moment) actually fell more surely into the role of Avon's second in command. Having learned the futility of prolonged argument with Dayna, Tarrant forbore to debate Cally's suitability as officer material, but he thought it doubtful, nonetheless. Cally was a brilliant guerilla strategist--he never failed to consult her when planning that type of campaign--but she sorely lacked any kind of appreciation for the necessities and niceties of chain of command.

He'd ventured to voice that opinion only once to Dayna and had regretted it ever since. "You can take the man out of the military, but not the military out of the man," had been the mildest of her varied remarks on the subject.

A man's ego could only take so much.

Automatically, Tarrant headed for the pilot's station, confirming with a glance that Liberator's orbit still held steady. "Cally." From the corner of his eye, he saw the Auron leaning over her station, both hands gripping the edges of her console. "Have you--"

A small, plaintive moan interrupted his absent-minded query. Tarrant's head jerked up and he glanced swiftly over at Cally's station.

She clung to her console, swaying, knuckles white where she clutched at the instrumentation in an effort to remain upright. A fine sheen of perspiration coated her thin face and her breath came in short, harsh gasps. Instead of the pallor he might have expected, though, her face appeared unnaturally flushed, almost fevered.

Tarrant crossed the distance separating them in two hasty strides. "Cally, what's wrong?" 

One upraised hand forestalled his attempt to put a hand to her forehead, to test her temperature. "Don't touch me, Tarrant. Don't--" Her head went back abruptly, her features distorting as if in some extremity of pain. "Don't touch me, Tarrant," she repeated. "Don't...oh."

"What is it, Cally?" As usual in a crisis, he felt the impulse to take charge. But in this case, he had no idea what to take charge _of._

"Avon." Her eyes were wide open and staring. Not as if she were being controlled, Tarrant noted with relief, but simply as if she were caught up in some hell she couldn't escape or evade. "Avon," she repeated, and bit back a sound that seemed almost a moan. "Avon...pl..."

"Are you...in touch with him?" Tarrant couldn't imagine a worse fate than being tapped into Avon's mind, but presumably telepaths were forced to deal with such unpleasantries early on and became accustomed. "Can you pinpoint his location?"

Cally shuddered, her fingers tightening convulsively over the console. "No." With a visible effort, she forced herself to form coherent syllables. "Sharat...my sister has him...I don't know precisely where. There's...some sort of shielding." Her face distorted again, into that rapt expression almost, but not quite, one of pain. "Avon..." she murmured again, but now her voice seemed...caressing.

"Cally." Tarrant wanted to touch her, to reassure her of his presence as a source of support, but felt unsure of her probable reaction. This type of situation hadn't exactly been featured in any of FSA's officer rule books and, frankly, he didn't know how to proceed, short of hauling her to the medunit and slapping a tranquilizer pad on her forehead. Which might solve the problem of Cally's present behavior, but would hardly contribute much to the ultimate goal of locating Avon. 

He tried probing for further information. "You didn't react this way when Zelda contacted you."

Cally gazed at him with wide, unseeing eyes. "Sharat is much more powerful." She closed her eyes briefly, tilting her head in response to an unseen voice. "That must've been why they locked her away. She was too... oh, sweet gods." She clenched her teeth, but a muffled groan came through anyway.

What in heaven's name is she sending you? Tarrant thought.

Cally's eyes snapped open as if Tarrant had spoken aloud. "She's sending me Avon...and herself." She shook her head helplessly. "I can't explain...I can't..." Her body suddenly arched forward and she gasped, "Tarrant. Help me."

Without conscious thought, Tarrant stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the shaking woman. And instantly became aware of what he had--without realizing it--half-sensed before. That the tremors passing through her body were from more than mere agitation, that her gasps and moans were not wholly a product of fear. She turned half away from the console, into his protective embrace and the slim, compact hips bumped against his in a primal rhythm.

Reflexively, his body reacted.

"Cally." His voice, as he was all too aware, sounded strained and more than a bit embarrassed. He'd never thought of Cally in a sexual manner--her psychic talents made her too conceptually alien for her to figure as anything but a valued colleague in his mind--but now his ideas had swerved into channels too carnal for comfort or, unfortunately, for concealment.

"Tarrant." She raised one hand--as if reluctantly--to touch his face, laying her palm flat along the curve of his cheek.

At her touch, vision rushed through him like an electric charge. He became Avon, and he--Avon--was stretched upon his back, bound with cold metal at wrist and elbow, knee and ankle. Lay helpless and writhing, with sharp nails raking his skin and an eager wet sheath surrounding his erection, seeming less like part of a woman than the ravenous maw of a carnivorous beast.

Then, just as suddenly, he became Sharat, riding her helpless prisoner, reveling in the feel of Avon filling her tight, virginal vagina, exhilarated by Avon's helplessness and Avon's ravishment and the psychic echoes of Avon's pain.

And then, with terrible vividness, he became Cally, dragged along on the tide of her sister's wild arousal and wanting, wanting, wanting (why had he never seen it?) Avon with the ferocity of long-denied desire. Almost, but not quite, able to touch his body, almost but not quite, feeling his movements within her. Almost...

Abruptly, Cally pulled her hand away and the connection shattered. With a cry, Tarrant doubled over--as much as he could with the Auron in his arms--gasping with shock and the sharp, undesired sensation of secondhand arousal. He'd heard of a state of erection so acute as to be actually painful, and even had thought he'd experienced it a time or two, but this went beyond any previous pale.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--" Cally shuddered again and again. Now Tarrant knew it for what it undoubtedly was, the oncoming edge of Sharat's orgasm, repeatedly delayed to wring the maximum agony from her sibling's body and mind.

"She's raping Avon." Tarrant spoke quietly, with a sense of unreality. He'd never heard of such a thing, not even in the raunchiest military wardroom talk. He hadn't seriously considered such an act to be even possible.

With difficulty, Cally nodded. "And rape's only the beginning. She wants to..." She shook her head as if to clear it, obviously failing to do so. "Hurt him...I don't know." She clutched at Tarrant's tunic, instinctively moving her hips forward in a way that his Liberator-enforced celibacy found much too seductive. He found himself burying his face in her curls, breathing deeply of some flowery scent that perhaps came from her soap or shampoo, the echoed sensations of the vision too much to resist.

The next moments seemed to stretch an eternity...and conversely, to end much too soon.

She had one leg wrapped around his hip and he one hand within the inadequate barrier of her tunic, when she suddenly broke away. Retreating across several meters of deck, she stood staring at him dumbly--as obviously shocked as he--one hand clutching together the gap in her tunic.

"Tarrant, we can't--" Cally forced the words out between the shudders that came more and more closely together now. Then, between one labored breath and the next, she vanished, almost running from the flight deck.

He stumbled to his own station, leaning heavily against the console.

A moment later, his peripheral vision registered another figure entering the flight deck, dark instead of light. Dayna. Moving painfully, he managed to angle the front of his body away from her line of sight.

"What's wrong with Cally?" She moved toward him with her usual smoothly aggressive gait, a motion too graceful and too alluring for the present state of his tortured senses. "She ran right past me." Pausing beside his station, she stooped to peer into his face. "Tarrant. You don't look well."

"I'm not... Dayna, will you take my watch?" He registered the instant surprise on her face. As a matter of pride, he never asked the others to take his watch, no matter how fatiguing the mission that had preceded it.

"Tarrant?" Dayna's voice was uncharacteristically soft and questioning.

"Thank you," he said crisply, as if she'd answered the question, then turned sharply and headed for the steps leading to the passage. After he took five--very necessary--moments of privacy, he'd find Cally and hope that by now she'd be in shape to talk and to plan.

Somehow, they had to find Avon and they had to find him immediately. Tarrant didn't pretend to understand--or at times, even to much like--the older man, but no one deserved to be the object of the malevolence he'd sensed from that brief link to Cally's sibling. This went beyond mere sex to some dark depths beyond Tarrant's experience, that mixed sexual desire with a far more bitter brew.

He'd not leave any fellow crew--or any fellow male--to face the future he'd seen in Sharat's mind.

Not even Avon.


End file.
